Welcome to my spring home tour, complete with the occasional peacock feather! Stick around until the end because I’m also going to tell you how to win $400 AND direct you to a whole bunch of other fabulous spring home tours. You’ll probably want to cancel your afternoon appointments.

When I got the chance to participate in the spring home tour hosted by Carrie over at Lovely, Etc., my first thought was, “but I don’t really decorate for spring.” It’s true that my seasonal decorating is pretty well tapped out after Christmas, and I don’t pick it up again until Halloween. But then I realized that what generally happens when I take my Christmas stuff down is that I don’t so much put anything up in its place….and then things look a little sad and barren (like the trees in winter! There’s a metaphor here!) until sometime in the spring, when my house/nature starts to come back to life.

So, while there are some decidedly spring-y touches here and there, there’s not tons and tons of flowers and greenery or Easter eggs everywhere on this tour. Instead, there are spaces that sorely needed some attention up until a week ago and are now finally getting it. An interesting side effect, is that I’ve gotten inspired about a few more not unspringlike ideas that I’ve been putting off for too long. There was a time when I thought this spring tour might include a bunch more of those ideas. But then time got in the way, as it always does. So this will be a low key sort of tour.

 

When I asked Dave what we should use for spring decorating, he said, “peacocks.” Why not, right? Peacocks are pretty. So I bought peacock feathers instead of flowers.

Our foyer is the space in our house that gets the seasonal decor treatment most frequently. I mean, it’s right there when you open the door and all. But it had been sporting the sad remains of Christmas ever since January. No more!

This is a pretty bunny intensive little vignette, but I think it’s going to stick around for awhile after Easter. Bunnies are an ALL THE TIME animal. In my opinion. Because they’re so soft and adorable.

I’ve been on a green kick lately, and what better time for green than springtime? The two green vases (now with peacock feathers (see? told you)) were part of the Christmas decorations here, and they got to stick around for spring. Along with a faux plant from Ikea and that thrifted rabbit drawing. It was $10, which was more than I wanted to pay, but after looking into his rabbit eyes, I couldn’t leave him behind.

Way back when Boxy Colonial was just a baby blog, I bought some ceramic rabbits at the thrift store and painted them silver. Then one of them broke. Then they sat in my basement for the next two Easters, which I think was probably really sad for them.

And then! I bought a friend for them at the thrift store and painted them all gold! Because gold beats silver. This year anyway.

I stenciled the squirrels on the walls a couple of years ago with a Sharpie paint pen.

We like to have something on this dresser to hold on to keys and such for us so we don’t lose them. The women in my neighborhood have started doing a night out once a month, and last month we went to a paint your own pottery/mosaic/canvas type place. I made this glass dish. It’s not the most beautiful thing I’ve ever created, but it’s got the green going on, and it’s doing it’s key-holding job well:

And, of course, one nice thing about spring is clearing most of the coats and winter stuff off our hall tree so that the foyer looks a little less cluttered. My husband built the bench and coat rack a couple of years ago; it was the first furniture he ever built, and we still love it. And Fiesta the Beagle loves the sun that comes through our french door:

And next to the foyer is our library, which is always one of the brightest places in the house. The dogs like the loveseat in here, so we always leave some kind of throw over it. I usually take it off for photos, but this time I left it on to be all authentic and also because it’s my favorite protect the dogs from the loveseat throw and all pink and springlike:

This room has only had small, incremental changes since we put the Ikea Billy shelves in shortly after we moved in (even before I started blogging). In the last few months, we’ve added the the Ikea bins to hold sheet music and put up pictures that are not actually of our dogs but look like our dogs over them. And I don’t think I’ve shown the piano corner on the blog since we added these brass birds (they were a Christmas gift from my brother and sister-in-law):

We put up copper shelves in the kitchen awhile back, and they’ve stayed pretty much the way I first set them up ever since. They were definitely due for some rearranging and some spring touches:

I’ve had the chicken and rooster that are on the top shelf for FOREVER, but they were the same unfinished ceramic they were when I bought them (at the thrift store) until last week, when I finally broke out the spray paint. The vintage scale next to them is another thrift find. On the next shelf, the green pitcher was a handmade wedding gift from a friend of Dave’s family (there used to be a matching bowl, but….kids). Right next to that is a set of measuring cups from Anthropologie (by way of the thrift store, of course). The matroyshka measuring cups (affiliate link) were a gift from one of the kids a couple of Christmases ago. And then of course there are the little chipmunks in a basket. I don’t know what it’s supposed to be, but I decided to put toothpicks in it. I’m charmed by the way they stick up behind the chipmunks’ heads. The lowest shelf is where we keep bowls and plates (these are Ikea) that we use every day. And then I added that rustic wooden bowl that I picked up a couple of weeks ago and filled it with lemons and limes.

And here’s the whole kitchen. The March page on my See America calendar (affiliate link) is cooperating nicely by having very spring appropriate colors. I love doing house tours, because my kitchen gets so clean:

I’m not a huge flower person (even though they always look so great in other people’s houses; I should maybe work on becoming a flower person), but I grabbed this little sprig of flowers from the floral clearance section at the grocery store for $2. I think I need to do that more often:

And one last space that got a little bit springified is our master bedroom. I actually had/have some bigger plans in here, because it’s been awhile since it got any attention….but then I couldn’t find the summer set of curtains I wanted to hang up, and I just kind of got defeated and gave up. Sorry, bedroom: I’ll get to you soon! But! This is the spring of the peacock, so I needed to put some peacock feathers one more place. This little gold vase used to have some decidedly wintery red and white berry things in it. I took those out and….peacock feathers! Happy, Dave? (I’m reasonably certain he hasn’t even noticed them, actually)

Incidentally, these are fake peacock feathers, and the others are real. You can really tell the difference….I think I’m going to be snobby about having only real peacock feathers from now on. Except that it literally just occurred to me to check whether they hurt the peacocks to get the feathers, and….cursory research has not been illuminating. Peacocks moult and lose their feathers, of course, which is where I assumed my feathers came from, but some sources claim that’s not how most companies that sell to craft stores get them. Hmm…..I will need to investigate further. Because I like peacocks and I want them to be happy. Or just be content with the peacock feathers I have now and not continue to fill my house with more and more and MORE.

So, with that cautionary tale, let’s move on to happier things….like YOU winning $400:
a Rafflecopter giveaway

 

And YOU checking out all these other wonderful spring home tours:

 

 

Monday

Lovely Etc.

All Things With Purpose

The Happy Housie

Restless Arrow

The Turquoise Home

Tuesday

Our House Now a Home

Seeking Lavender Lane

Run to Radiance

Primitive and Proper

Place of My Taste

Wednesday

House by Hoff

Blue I Style

Bigger Than The Three of Us

Casa Watkins

Thursday

The Tale of an Ugly House

Boxy Colonial

A House Full of Sunshine

Friday

Designing Vibes

Shabby Grace

Re-Fabbed